


i have seen peace, i have seen pain, resting on the shoulders of your name

by fragilelittleteacup



Category: True Detective
Genre: Angst, Dubious Consent (Maggie/Rust), Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pre/Post-Carcosa, Romance, Sex-Repulsed, an exploration of canon events and rust's personal life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 07:03:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10871559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fragilelittleteacup/pseuds/fragilelittleteacup
Summary: Rust tries, until he doesn't have to anymore.





	i have seen peace, i have seen pain, resting on the shoulders of your name

Rust told Maggie later, his voice easy and low with alcohol and the minimal effort of lying, that he’d taken the woman home and said goodnight on her doorstep.

What he didn’t tell her is that he’d gone inside. That he’d hovered in her kitchen holding a glass of whiskey in one hand like it was his only salvation, an itch crawling beneath his skin as he realised what was about to come next. He’d always been this way– maybe it was that he’d never been hugged by his father, maybe it was because he’d never had a mother. Maybe he’d learned to associated touch with violence. Maybe he just kept thinking of Claire, after all this time, and he just couldn’t move on, because she was the only person he had enjoyed being touched by. There was a list buried deep under all his denial and bone-deep rejection, a list of all the _reasons_ he was the way he was– he’d come to a lonely and still place, and he didn’t want to be joined, in that terrible purgatory, by any company that could constitute intimacy. He just… he didn’t _like_ it anymore.

It was a horrid thing to admit.

She moved closer to him, her shoulders moving back into a confident posture as his sloped forward in an unconscious expression of discomfort. He had run through gunfights with cocaine humming through his blood, moving at light speed, and yet he had never felt this kind of fear in the midst of horrific violence. Only ever in these quiet moments did he feel so frightened.

She reached down to curl her arm around his waist, shift closer, her feet bare against her floor. He watched the curl of her ankles, the way muscle shifted as she stretched up onto her toes. He closed his eyes when she kissed him, because he’d never get used to this feeling. The sensation that he was an alien in his own skin, simultaneously a thousand miles away and trapped without any means of escape. He let out a shuddering breath, and she took it as permission, as agreement– she kissed the side of his mouth, seeking his participation in this _thing_ that he feared so deeply.

“Listen, Jennifer-”

“You’re really not into this, are you?”

She asked the question with a disappointed annoyance, a tiredness, obviously wondering what she was doing wrong. He shied away from her, shaking his head, the tugging ache in his chest lessening as he put some distance between their bodies. He imagined what Marty would say, and then quickly stopped, because he knew _exactly_ what Marty would say.

_The fuck’s wrong with you, Rust?_

“Sorry.” He cast his gaze somewhere around her cheek, focussing on the rogue that gave her face a childlike, sweet complexion. He licked at his lips, felt nauseous when he tasted the chalky residue of lipstick.

Then he left, because he knew he couldn’t offer this woman what she wanted. And he certainly couldn’t answer the question Marty would ask, the same one that had kept Rust sleepless and haunted for so many years.

_What the fuck’s wrong with me?_

“I think you guys would be good together if you gave it a chance,” Maggie told him later, “You guys don’t give things chances. I don’t know why that is.”

He gazed at the case files in front of him, felt his fingers tremble, flecks of ash shuddering from the edge of his cigarette in testament to the war within him. He had tried. He had _wanted_ to give it a chance.

“That’s because we know what we want. And we don’t mind being alone.”

A lie. A cruel one, because silence was her only answer, and he knew she was in so much pain that her own marital problems would forever deafen her to his lies. She would never see his vulnerability in any way that mattered, because all she would ever see was her own.

“Go to bed, Maggie,” he murmured, offering her a way out, “Marty’ll be home. Take care.”

He hung up.

 

 

 

 

 

He turned out to be right. Maggie never did never see his weaknesses, never in the same way that Claire had– the way that, maybe, he’d _wanted_ her to see his weaknesses. He’d seen redemption in her tender smile and soft brown hair, and that only made it worse when she used what she knew to get what she wanted.

After she left– after he screamed at her to get out– he fell against the wall, sliding down in a daze, head emptying of anything coherent. His pants were undone, and he could feel the moisture of her, sticky and disgusting against his skin.

It hurt. It hurt so fucking much, and the alien feeling had returned– he knew it wouldn’t go away now. Not for a long time. He reached his arms around himself, trying to get warm, trying to keep himself in one piece– but he could feel himself fragmenting, could feel something dislodging inside him, something that would never fit back in place, and he just _knew_ he would be hollow and cold until he could feel the comforting hand of Marty steadying him just like he had that night on the Hart family doorstep-

He wished he didn’t need Marty more than he ever had before.

He wished he could place blame where it deserved to rest.

 

 

 

 

 

Years later, he sat in a car with the very man himself, and it barely felt real. He was at the end of something, the end of everything, and knowing these were his final days made every moment feel precious,  _worth_ something.

“Yeah, uh,” Marty cleared his throat, tapped his thumb on the steering wheel, looking out the windscreen hard. There was guilt in his voice, regret in his eyes. “You know, when she told me… she said not to blame you. That it wasn’t… your choice. You were drunk, and she made it happen.”

Rust hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t expected Marty to offer any kind of apology, stammered or muttered or otherwise. And it hit him hard, with the weight of the goodbye he hadn’t yet said, the confession of final surrender he was yet to reveal to Marty. He let his eyes slide closed as the pain of that terrible night returned to him in a flash of vulnerability, and he knew it was showing in his stiff, tired posture. He was an old man, now, but he had been young then. And it had been so raw. So awful.

Silence stretched on. He let the agony build up in his chest like a knot, and then…

…he let it pass.

 

 

 

 

 

The stiff, uncomfortable fabric of a wheelchair stretched under him, and he could feel his pelvic bone grinding against the synthetic seat, his skin tight from all the days he’d refused hospital food and waited stubbornly until Marty would bring him something wholly inappropriate for a recovering trauma victim. Burgers. Fries. Salty, greasy food, reminding him of their old days. Relieving in their honesty, their resistance to the starched and cold world that he now lived in. Fucking hospitals.

Marty was kneeling in front of him, the distant lights of the hospital touching against his face with a tenderness that was nothing compared to the love in his eyes. Rust let everything pour out of him in sobs and hitched words. Everything that had haunted him, everything that had ensured the distance between him and everyone else he’d ever met, everything that had stabbed so deep he’d lost the very definitions of who he was long before a knife gutted him deep enough to kill.

His fingers, bony and lacking in elegance, reached toward Marty, seeking him out with a plea that he didn’t need to voice. The packet of cigarettes, their engagement ring, fell to the concrete with a muffled tap. Marty leaned against him, bowing over Rust like he could shield him from the world. His mouth found the side of Rust’s neck, murmuring comforting words, and Rust pulled him close.

He needed this. He’d needed this for a long time.

“Don’t go,” Marty breathed, “please, Rust.”

Rust’s breath hitched, high and helpless, in his throat. He clutched Marty tighter.

“I know what you were gonna do, Rust. But she’ll always be there, waitin’. Can’t you just stay here? Stay with me?” Marty was crying now, and Rust felt the flat planes of his back against his palms. “Please. Please. She’ll still be there. Don’t go.”

“Okay.” Rust’s voice was broken with a laugh, a sobbed hysteria. He opened his mouth wide, breathed in the scent of Marty's skin, inhaling deeper than he had in years, like the stars and the sky and the _universe_ were flowing into his lungs, unobstructed, uninterrupted, and he could  _finally_ breathe. He kept laughing, and couldn't stop. “Okay, Marty. I'll stay. I'll-"

He choked on his words, but Marty laughed as well, and Rust knew that he didn't need to elaborate, didn't need to tell Marty everything that had been boiling beneath his skin all these years.

He just needed to hold on. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i don't even know where this came from. rust really hurts my heart. i'm emotional and on painkillers (which is the only reason i'm able to write hhaahaa), and this is unbeta'd, so please excuse any mistakes.


End file.
